Creative Director Leaves Bungie – Secret Project Abandoned?

Marcus Lehto, creative director at Bungie, has tweeted that he has left the company.

It is the second time Lehto, who was creative director for Halo: Reach, will leave Bungie. He previously quit the studio in September last year but it seems unlikely that Lehto will return as he also tweeted “All is great – seriously – but there is no road back this time.”

Now for the entirely speculative part. The wider context of this is when Lehto rejoined Bungie, it seemed to be the promise of working on a new project with a new team that tempted him back into the fold.

Well, my discussions continued to develop with Bungie and soon we had a plan together that made a ton of sense. Why slave over the difficulties of building a studio from scratch when I could start something new, working on a brand new IP right within Bungie itself?

So, it is with great care that I will be venturing back to Bungie on Monday. I will be teaming up with my longtime colleague, Joe Tung, to start the construction of a brand new team and project. We will be a lean and mean organization for a while until our first game pitch is ready, and then grow from there.

Was Lehto working on Destiny? The rumoured Marathon reboot? As Bungie doesn’t appear to have even announced what this new project even is, it’s unlikely we’ll have anything more than speculation or rumours to go on about the fate of the project or how Lehto leaving will affect it.